Table 2 Authors’ checklist for gender-sensitive reporting

✓ Are the concepts of gender and/or sex used in your research project?

✓ If yes, have you explicitly defined the concepts of gender and/or sex? Is it clear what aspects of gender and/or sex are being examined in your study?

✓ If no, do you consider this to be a significant limitation? Given existing knowledge in the relevant literature, are there plausible gender and/or sex factors that should have been considered? If you consider sex and/or gender to be highly relevant to your proposed research, the research design should reflect this

✓ Does your research question(s) or hypothesis/es make reference to gender and/or sex, or relevant groups or phenomena? (e.g., differences between males and females, differences among women, seeking to understand a gendered phenomenon such as masculinity)

✓ Does your literature review cite prior studies that support the existence (or lack) of significant differences between women and men, boys and girls, or males and females?

✓ Does your literature review point to the extent to which past research has taken gender or sex into account?

✓ Is your sample appropriate to capture gender and/or sex-based factors?

✓ Is it possible to collect data that are disaggregated by sex and/or gender?

✓ Are the inclusion and exclusion criteria well justified with respect to sex and/or gender? (Note: this pertains to human and animal subjects and biological systems that are not whole organisms)

✓ Is the data collection method proposed in your study appropriate for investigation of sex and/or gender?

✓ Is your analytic approach appropriate and rigorous enough to capture gender and/or sex-based factors?

✓ Does your study design account for the relevant ethical issues that might have particular significance with respect to gender and/or sex? (e.g., inclusion of pregnant women in clinical trials)